The present invention is directed to bicycles and, more particularly, to an apparatus for wiring bicycle electrical components.
In recent years, bicycles have been equipped with a variety of electrical components. Such electrical components include gear shift devices, suspension devices, display devices, and the control devices used to control them. For example, an automatic gear shifting device may use the signal from a speed sensor to automatically change gears in a gear shifting device based on bicycle speed. In this case, power supply lines and/or control signal lines usually are connected between the control device, the gear shift device and the speed sensor.
One approach to reducing the number of wires connected between the components is to construct the control device integrally with the controlled device. For example, a gear shift control device may be constructed integrally with a gear shift unit, or a display control device may be constructed integrally with a display unit. Such an approach works satisfactorily when the number of electrical devices is relatively small. However, when the number of electrical devices to be controlled increases, the number of power and/or control lines increases dramatically. One approach to reducing the number of wires in this situation involves the use of distributed intelligent control units and integrated or composite signals to provide power and/or control signals to the components. Such signals sometimes take the form of pulsed signals, wherein the signal is repetitively turned on and off to provide both power and control information to the components. The resulting system uses fewer wires, and the length of wiring between the components decreases.
However, even in such systems, the distance between electrical components and the routing of the wires varies depending upon the bicycle model and the frame construction. As a result, the length of the wiring cannot be predetermined, so the placement of the components is limited according to the arbitrary wire lengths provided by the manufacturer.
The present invention is directed to various features of an apparatus for wiring bicycle electrical components. In one embodiment, a bicycle electrical control apparatus comprises a first control unit that provides first electrical signals; a second control unit that provides second electrical signals; and an electrical connecting cord having a first end coupled to the first control unit and a second end coupled to the second control unit for communicating the first electrical signals from the first control unit to the second control unit. A first connecting terminal is fastened to one of the first and second ends of the electrical connecting cord, a second connecting terminal is disposed on one of the first and second control units, and the first connecting terminal is detachably connected to the second connecting terminal. Additional inventive features will become apparent from the description below, and such features alone or in combination with the above features may form the basis of further inventions as recited in the claims and their equivalents.